USA Politics

Kamala is the safe pick. Warren would have attracted progressives, but frankly the progressives who are considering sitting out or voting third party or whatever else aren’t worth courting and live in reliably blue metropolitan areas anyway. Kamala Harris is a good unity pick, can run to the left of Biden but not too far from center, and won’t generate any real controversy.

So far the theme of the Biden campaign is to keep the election about Trump, and it’s working. The Harris selection is another example of this, choose a non-controversial figure who is well liked by the base and also won’t suck the air out of the room. It’ll be a big news story for the next week or so until Trump does something stupid again.

To that end, people in the media often talk about this “point of no return” for Trump, I think we may be there already. 2020 is a very different beast than 2016. The polling error that gave Trump the win in 2016 is becoming increasingly out of reach. Furthermore, Biden has a much larger electoral map to work with. But the big factor here is mail in voting. People are going to start sending in ballots within a few weeks at the earliest. Trump may very well be out of time to turn the coronavirus/economic fallout ship around and account for the time lag time to bump up his numbers.
 
There's a whole thread about that.

Kamala Harris is already being subjected to the "Is she really a US citizen" arguments that also went after Barack Obama. Harris was born in the USA to immigrant parents, and was raised for some of her teen years in Canada. Of course, the 14th Amendment clearly states she is an American citizen, and naturally born to it, but hey, she's also Black, right, and has a weird and spooky first name!
 
LooseCannon said:
There's a whole thread about that.
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Thank you!

LooseCannon said:
Kamala Harris is already being subjected to the "Is she really a US citizen" arguments that also went after Barack Obama. Harris was born in the USA to immigrant parents, and was raised for some of her teen years in Canada. Of course, the 14th Amendment clearly states she is an American citizen, and naturally born to it, but hey, she's also Black, right, and has a weird and spooky first name!
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I love George Tekei's meme that reads, "Tucker Carlson thinks it's funny to mispronounce Kamala Harris' name, I wonder what other word sounds like "Tucker"
 
Onhell said:
I don't agree. There is no difference if someone has a heart attack either from old age or high cholesterol, why does it matter when it is mental health?
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It’s not about heart attacks, it’s about mental health that supposedly declines when you approach 80, which I find an interesting statement, so I was asking for evidence, because I didn’t know if it’s true or not. Still don’t.
 
It's very individual when that decline starts. Whether you talk about memory, ability to concentrate/focus, clear speech (both in terms of forming clear sentences, finding words quickly and pronouncing words clearly) or processing information quickly, there will be big differences between people of the same age.

Anecdotal evidence: I can't help comparing Trump's schoolboy-level vocabulary and inability to complete long sentences, to my dad's late aunt who had studied languages and theology in her youth (around the time of WW2), spent time in Hungary and Israel and even when passing 90 she would tell stories from that time in a sharp, crystal clear language. It was a sad contrast to see what happened when she suffered a stroke and lost a lot of memory and became fully dependent on assistance the last year or two before she died. But even after her stroke ... I think she spoke better than Trump. The problem was she would now repeat the same things over and over.

But again, Trump does the same ... "the fake news media hates me, China sent the virus to help the weak Democrats steal the election from me, etc ..."
 
How did I not know that Trump is in his 70s? Guess the hair dye and orange tan works, eh? I thought mid 60s.

I take back what I said previously about rivals being too old. Out of interest, why are presidential candidates so old?
 
In interviews from the 80s, Trump speaks coherently and structured, albeit just as boastful and self-indulgent. It would be interesting to know if it's possible to see at around what time his decline started from video material.
 
Brigantium said:
I take back what I said previously about rivals being too old. Out of interest, why are presidential candidates so old?
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Not all candidates are old, but lately the ones who have clinched the nominations have been.

Republican candidates with the exception of W have been old since at least Ronald Reagan, and part of that is the GOP’s tendency to nominate whoever came in second in the previous nomination contest, which tacks 4-8 years onto everybody. Trump was an aberration in this respect, but he still happened to be old.

Democratic candidates have generally been a bit younger, especially starting with Bill Clinton. He, Gore, and Obama were all pretty young by presidential nomination standards. Hillary Clinton was old because the party tried to do a variation on the legacy thing like the Bushes had successfully done with W. The 2020 Democratic field was dominated by people in their 70s, though, which was strange. I guess it was the last gasp of people who were activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s — actual boomers who populated the party during the Vietnam era.

I don’t know what a post-Trump Republican Party is even going to look like, because he’s transformed it into something different that’s more of a cult of personality. I don’t know if the more traditional never-Trumpers are even going to be able to return, so it’s hard to say what will happen there. But the Democrats are going to have to swing younger, because many of the “greatest hits” candidates are going to start dying off.
 
I think the oldness of recent candidates has been more a coincidence than anything else. Both parties have young rising stars who will probably be serious contenders in 2024 and beyond. In 2020, the dems had Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Harris, and Booker who were all pretty young and seen as serious candidates. Without Biden in the race, or a smaller field, I could see one of these candidates (Buttigieg probably) taking the nomination. In 2016, Republicans had Cruz and Rubio, either of whom probably would've been the nominee of the vote wasn't spread among so many different candidates. The 2016 on the democrat side is probably the exception here, but nobody in their right mind was going to get into a primary race against Hillary.

I imagine that, regardless who wins in November, both parties are going to push for younger candidates. They're going to have to if they want to build a long lasting bench. If Biden wins, Harris is a lock for 2024 (although she will probably face a young progressive challenger). Some of the names being floated on the Republican side include Josh Hawley, Nikki Haley, (don't laugh) Tucker Carlson. You'll probably see Rubio and Cruz take another stab at it. All younger folks.
 
Mosh said:
ome of the names being floated on the Republican side include Josh Hawley, Nikki Haley, (don't laugh) Tucker Carlson.
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Wasn't sure what thread to post this in, but a video of Joe Biden declaring that they need to support the opposition in Turkey to get rid of Erdoğan made the news in Turkey today and was the main topic of discussion. It was the Head of the Presidential Department for Communication (at this point the Minister of Propaganda, essentially) who brought it into attention as it's pretty much the best thing they could ask for.

He did say "not through a coup, but through the electoral process", but this was obviously taken as a statement of interventionism considering the US' history of interventionism in Turkish politics, obviously used by the government as "proof" that the opposition is in cahoots with the United States in a conspiracy against Erdoğan. The opposition quickly denounced the statement and criticized Biden, essentially telling him that's it's none of his (or the US') business.

You could look at it from two ways. It's either Biden not giving a flying fuck about the consequences of his speech and just trying to appear sexy by saying such a thing about a foreign tyrant in the lead up to an election. Or it's him being utterly tone-deaf and clueless and not knowing how and where to speak. Or it's a combination of both. If he were oh so concerned about the state of Turkish politics and in tune with it, surely he'd know that our government has been pushing this line for years now and be aware how such a statement from him would be taken. It's especially bothersome considering the type of politician Biden is - essentially a champion of interventionist foreign policy.

(I realize this is a largely irrelevant development with regard to USA Politics, but it is Biden and it is a declaration of intent with regard to foreign policy about a key NATO ally, so I'm putting it here. Quite an upsetting development for people in opposition to Erdoğan such as myself.)
 
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I think that "tough on dictators" is going to be part of Biden's push, and he's going to lump a lot of the new class of strongmen into that - Orban, Erdogan, and that guy in Poland - to make his point. And I don't think he cares about the ramifications of that speech.
 
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